Megawatt in the context of "Inventor"

Play Trivia Questions online!

or

Skip to study material about Megawatt in the context of "Inventor"

Ad spacer

⭐ Core Definition: Megawatt

The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m⋅s. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named in honor of James Watt (1736–1819), an 18th-century Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved the Newcomen engine with his own steam engine in 1776, which became fundamental for the Industrial Revolution.

↓ Menu

>>>PUT SHARE BUTTONS HERE<<<
In this Dossier

Megawatt in the context of Wind farm

A wind farm, also called a wind park or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turbines covering an extensive area. Wind farms can be either onshore or offshore.

Many of the largest operational onshore wind farms are located in China, India, and the United States. For example, the largest wind farm in the world, Gansu Wind Farm in China had a capacity of over 6,000 MW by 2012, with a goal of 20,000 MW by 2020. As of December 2020, the 1218 MW Hornsea Wind Farm in the UK is the largest offshore wind farm in the world. Individual wind turbine designs continue to increase in power, resulting in fewer turbines being needed for the same total output.

↑ Return to Menu

Megawatt in the context of Rooftop photovoltaic power station

A rooftop solar power system, or rooftop PV system, is a photovoltaic (PV) system that has its electricity-generating solar panels mounted on the rooftop of a residential or commercial building or structure. The various components of such a system include photovoltaic modules, mounting systems, cables, solar inverters battery storage systems, charge controllers, monitoring systems, racking and mounting systems, energy management systems, net metering systems, disconnect switches, grounding equipment, protective devices, combiner boxes, weatherproof enclosures and other electrical accessories.

Rooftop mounted systems are small compared to utility-scale solar ground-mounted photovoltaic power stations with capacities in the megawatt range, hence being a form of distributed generation. A comprehensive life cycle analysis study showed that rooftop solar is better for the environment than utility-scale solar. Most rooftop PV stations are Grid-connected photovoltaic power systems. Rooftop PV systems on residential buildings typically feature a capacity of about 5–20 kilowatts (kW), while those mounted on commercial buildings often reach 100 kilowatts to 1 megawatt (MW). Very large roofs can house industrial scale PV systems in the range of 1–10 MW.

↑ Return to Menu

Megawatt in the context of Three Gorges Dam

The Three Gorges Dam, officially known as Yangtze River Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project is a hydroelectric gravity dam that spans the Yangtze River near Sandouping in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, central China, downstream of the Three Gorges. The world's largest power station by installed capacity (22,500 MW), the Three Gorges Dam generates 95±20 TWh of electricity per year on average, depending on the amount of precipitation in the river basin. After the monsoons of 2020, the dam produced nearly 112 TWh in a year, breaking the record of 103 TWh set by the Itaipu Dam in 2016.

The dam's body, 185 meters high and 2,309 meters wide, was completed in 2006. The power plant became fully operational in 2012, when the last of the 32 main water turbines in the underground plant began production. The last major component of the project, the ship lift, was completed in 2015.

↑ Return to Menu

Megawatt in the context of Fossil fuel power station

A fossil fuel power station is a thermal power station that burns fossil fuel, such as coal, oil, or natural gas, to produce electricity. Fossil fuel power stations have machines that convert the heat energy of combustion into mechanical energy, which then powers an electrical generator. The prime mover may be a steam turbine, a gas turbine or, in small plants, a reciprocating gas engine. All plants use the energy extracted from the expansion of a hot gas, either steam or combustion gases. Although different energy conversion methods exist, all thermal power station conversion methods have their efficiency limited by the Carnot efficiency and therefore produce waste heat.

Fossil fuel power stations provide most of the electrical energy used in the world. Some fossil-fired power stations are designed for continuous operation as baseload power plants, while others are used as peaker plants. However, starting from the 2010s, in many countries plants designed for baseload supply are being operated as dispatchable generation to balance increasing generation by variable renewable energy.

↑ Return to Menu

Megawatt in the context of List of offshore wind farms

This article lists the largest offshore wind farms that are currently operational rated by nameplate capacity. It also lists the largest offshore wind farms currently under construction, the largest proposed offshore wind farms, and offshore wind farms with notability other than size.

As of 2022, Hornsea 2 in the United Kingdom is the largest offshore wind farm in the world at 1,386 MW.

↑ Return to Menu

Megawatt in the context of Banjë Hydro Power Plant

Banjë Hydro Power Plant is a large hydroelectricity plant on the river Devoll situated near the village of Banjë, Albania. It was built by Devoll Hydropower, an Albanian company owned by Norwegian power company Statkraft. The project consists of a large power plant with a nominal capacity of 70 MW and an average annual production of 242 GWh. The dam is 900 metres long, 370 metres wide and 80 metres high. The reservoir was planned to have a surface area of 14 km, and a storage capacity of about 400 million m. It was completed in 2016.

↑ Return to Menu

Megawatt in the context of List of largest power stations in the world

This article lists the largest power stations in the world, the ten overall and the five of each type, in terms of installed electrical capacity. Non-renewable power stations are those that run on coal, fuel oils, nuclear fuel, natural gas, oil shale and peat, while renewable power stations run on fuel sources such as biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar, and wind. Only the most significant fuel source is listed for power stations that run on multiple sources.

As of 2025, the largest power generating facility ever built is the Three Gorges Dam in China, completed in 2012. The facility generates power by utilizing 32 Francis turbines for a total capacity of 22,500 MW. The eight largest power stations are also hydroelectric dams, beginning with Baihetan Dam, at 16,000 MW, also in China. The largest natural gas plant is Jebel Ali, UAE (8,695 MW) and the largest coal plant is Tuoketuo, China (6,720 MW). The largest nuclear plant is Kori, South Korea (7,489 MW) following the 2011 suspension of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, Japan (7,965 MW).

↑ Return to Menu

Megawatt in the context of Radial turbine

A radial turbine is a turbine in which the flow of the working fluid is radial to the shaft. The difference between axial and radial turbines consists in the way the fluid flows through the components (compressor and turbine). Whereas for an axial turbine the rotor is 'impacted' by the fluid flow, for a radial turbine, the flow is smoothly oriented perpendicular to the rotation axis, and it drives the turbine in the same way water drives a watermill. The result is less mechanical stress (and less thermal stress, in case of hot working fluids) which enables a radial turbine to be simpler, more robust, and more efficient (in a similar power range) when compared to axial turbines. When it comes to high power ranges (above 5 MW) the radial turbine is no longer competitive (due to its heavy and expensive rotor) and the efficiency becomes similar to that of the axial turbines.

↑ Return to Menu